Presence review
Steven Soderbergh plays with perspective as he tackles a ghost story.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Presence
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by David Koepp
Starring Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, Chris Sullivan, Lucas Papaelias, Callina Liang, West Mullholland, Eddy Maday and Benny Elledge
Presence Review
Steven Soderbergh’s filmography is filled with interesting choices. From acclaimed dramas like Traffic to movie star romps like Ocean’s Eleven. From crowd pleasers like Magic Mike to crime comedies like Out of Sight. The prolific director has shown now shortage of interests since carving his name into the industry with the independent tentpole film Sex, Lies, and Videotape. 2025 sees him turning his attention to one of storytelling’s oldest types of tales. The ghost story.
Now…don’t expect that to mean that Soderbergh’s interest lies in scaring the pants off his viewers. That is about as far away from the angle he takes on it as you could get. As has often been the case in his career…Soderbergh seeks a new way to tell the story. In fact, he finds an entirely new perspective. His camera becomes the perspective of the entity, or…presence, if you’d like…that inhabits the home of our main characters. It’s a gimmick, yes. One that would have shown itself to have a short shelf life in lesser hands. Soderbergh is too talented to allow that to happen. When he tackles an experiment, he knows better than to let that experiment live or die on its own.
The greatest trick in Presence isn’t taking the POV of a ghostly entity. It’s how Soderbergh and company manage to make that feel so natural over the course of the film. We’re watching snippets of a family’s life unfold from a disembodied, but interested, perspective. Presence’s experiment ultimately succeeds because the family’s stories are interesting enough to render the gimmick secondary. A dynamic view into the ups and downs of living characters…with the ability to, when extremely necessary, intervene.
At times the camera/ghost in Presence feels like having control of a situation. When something terrible is happening in front of us…viewers might think “someone needs to stop this”. Because our presence is an actual presence in the story…sometimes someone does. It’s the narrative equivalent of telling a character “Do not go in there” and having them hear you. It’s not hard to see how satisfying that might feel.
The family that moves into the unknowingly haunted house seems to be a fairly standard one at first blush. A hardworking mother (Lucy Liu), a concerned father (Chris Sullivan), their athletically gifted son Tyler (Eddy Maday) and their reserved daughter Chloe (Callina Liang). The longer we watch the family the more the cracks in their relationships begin to expose themselves. Shady business dealings…a mean streak combined with the ambition of popularity…and, most interestingly, an ability to sense the presence.
That last one belongs to Chloe. A young woman struggling to deal with the death of her best friend…whose home the family has just moved into. She senses the presence early in the story…recognizing it as a helpful spirit. Her mother and brother don’t have time for her “nonsense”. Her father is more open to believing her…but they’ll all be forced to recognize it as truth eventually. Chloe believes it to be the ghost of her friend…the particulars of whose death plays a surprisingly large role in what becomes the climax if Presence.
Presence features a fine cast performing in some unique circumstances. As the viewpoint of the entity…we have an up-close look at every scene. That doesn’t mean we sit in a standard camera perspective. We float through rooms following conversations as they play out in front of us. Getting to see the secrets and lies of a family barely holding it together…unaware of the danger they’re in or where it is coming from. We have a better understanding of who the true villain of Presence is…and, luckily, we are able to exude some influence over it.
Perspective is important in Presence. A fly in the room, as opposed to on the wall. A fly that can influence what happens in that room…when the time is right, and the situation calls for it. Steven Soderbergh crafts an entirely different kind of ghost story in Presence. One that puts you in the shoes of the ghost itself…with a movie that can hear you if you talk to it loud enough.
Scare Value
In lesser hands, Presence could have been swallowed by its clever but limited gimmick. Soderbergh is a storyteller who wouldn’t allow that to happen. Slowly letting the living characters take over the picture until the POV feels natural. This isn’t the kind of ghost story that will send shivers down your spine. It’s a story that happens to be from the perspective of a ghost. An excuse to play with camera movement and story beats? Sure. But a good one.
3.5/5
Presence Link
In theaters – Fandango
